Lust in the Time of Heartache

Sometimes non-professionals and film industry outsiders use their unique perspective to create interesting works of cinema that challenge our perception of the medium and exist outside of convention.

Usually though, the result is not good (much like anyone's first experiments with an art form that is unfamiliar to them.) This is fine except when the creator tries to inflate the piece into something much more than it actually is. In this case David Aurini and his friends decided to play Bruce Lee under a bridge and call it a surrealist, neo-noir film.

The entire first half of the video is just Aurini acting the part of brooding, no-nonsense genius as he drifts through different scenes of unhappy, bickering men and women. It's difficult to draw any meaning from this because Aurini's narration is about as captivating as an economics lecture, and the scenes which are supposed to serve as some sort of counterpoint to his diatribe, are inaudible. There was no sound mix in this video. I doubt there was a proper mic. Aside from Aurini's droning spiel you mostly just hear the lilting score and a couple of sound effects that were crudely dropped in.

To actually delve into a technical criticism of the video's cinematography would be both cruel and missing the point. Like doing a close reading of a 1st grader's journal assignment when really you're just trying to see if he could spell a few words right. That said, Lust in the Time of Heartache doesn't manage to spell many words correctly.

The last five minutes are pretty boring. The diatribe (of course) continues, but for some reason Aurini's character is being attacked by a bunch of dadly henchmen. You know how your 14 year-old cousin makes videos of him and his friends play fighting and puts them on Youtube? It's exactly like that. Fortunately this does lead to the only worthwhile moment in the entire video. A guy gets stabbed in the groin. It's pretty funny. If you'd rather not waste your time watching this movie just to see a groin stab, I'll save you the hassle and just tell you that it's at 6 minutes and 20 seconds in. He gets both kicked and stabbed in the groin.

All-in-all, this movie way too proud of itself considering that all its got is one decent nut shot in 10 minutes of molasses mouthed dreck.

Can't believe I wasted ten minutes of my life on a load of poorly recorded pretentious pseudo-intellectual blather and some overgrown adolescents playing "ninja" in slow motion. There's no coherent message or plot here, just random vignettes which appear to have no connection at all to the plodding monotone of the narrator who intones a series of vapid observations about life.

The audio is poorly recorded, apart from the narration and some "clangy" sound effects in the action sequence its mostly inaudible. Acting is wooden and would be sub-par for the average grade school production as would the silly ninja play-fighting.

Only gets one star because there is no option for zero stars.

This interesting short piece is Davis Aurini's producing, writing and acting film debut. Aurini has obtained recognition as a manosphere you tuber and blogger and is currently filming a documentary on the notorious and controversial Anita Sarkeesian. As usual in Aurini's work, the film is an acquired taste. His style is highly intellectual and (superficially) very pessimist. This will play quite well with Aurini's fan base and hopefully expose his work to a wider audience. The film's forte is its sheer audacity: a philosophical rant dressed up as a film noir martial arts hybrid. Its drawback is that it is very experimental and was made with a shoe string budget. The viewer that watches with an open mind and paying attention should come out satisfied.

This is one of the more worthwhile budget short films out there.

The acting, while not perfect, is better than one would expect from a film of this type. The score is well done and the narration is thought provoking. The fight scene is pretty camp, but it neither suffers from trying too hard, nor is it objectively bad, however, it is definitely not this film's strongest element.

The only real issue is that on the technical side, the production value really shows; regarding the audio quality, visual quality and one rather obvious digital effect.

This film is insightful and has some fun moments. For it's faults it is worth watching, and offers something for everyone to take away from the experience.